Adam Massman, 17, died after suffering an injury during Thursday night’s football game, and the loss hit the Alma Center-Humbird-Merrillan School District hard enough that the building opened on Saturday for students, parents and friends to begin grieving together.
Massman was a senior at Lincoln High School and was preparing to begin his final year this week. The district said counseling support was scheduled to start at Lincoln Jr./Sr. High School at noon on Monday, Aug. 24, and continue through Tuesday as students returned to school.
For a small district, the loss reached nearly every corner because Massman was tied into school life in more than one way. Superintendent Drew Semingson said his involvement at school and his family’s ties to Lincoln schools made the death feel personal across the district, while Megan Steussel called him “a friend, a fierce competitor, and someone who followed his convictions and his passions.”
Teammates answered the news with a tribute that said as much about the community as it did about Massman. They painted his school parking spot at Lincoln High School and added the letters “LLA” for “Long Live Adam,” along with images tied to the Massman family’s cattle business and tire tracks made with Adam’s own truck.
What happened on the field remains unanswered in the public account, and that absence hangs over everything that followed. The injury came during Thursday night’s game, but the district has not said what it was or how it happened, even as the school moved quickly to open its doors, bring in counselors and make room for a grief that was already spreading through family, classmates and teachers.
Steussel urged families to speak plainly in the wake of the death and said, “Tell your kids you love them. Tell your kids’ friends you love them. Tell them that you appreciate them being friends to your kids,” a line that now lands as both comfort and warning. For Lincoln schools, the next step is counseling beginning Monday, but the deeper question is how a community built around one another absorbs the death of a 17-year-old who was part of so many of its daily circles.
